CHOICE OF PLOT
CHOICE OF PLOT this is a funky clumsy old article. Plots fall naturally into two great divisions, drama and comedy. A surprising number of students make the perhaps natural error of starting on comedy work, intending to work over to drama when they shall have gained proficiency. This is the reverse of the proper procedure unless, as occasionally happens, the forte of the student is comedy and nothing else. There are comparatively few humorists of note in comparison with the number of serious writers, and this holds good in fiction and photoplay alike. Drama makes a more definite and certain appeal and is easier to sell than a comedy of similar grade, since a good story will carry a comparatively poor development, while in comedy action and idea must alike be good. It is best, then, to first essay drama plots, turning to comedy only when proficiency in writing is gained or when it becomes apparent that comedy and not drama is the indicated line of the student. The first requisite of a good plot is producibility. This is ex- plained in detail in Chapter XVII. A story as such is worthless if it cannot be produced or at least made at a cost that will permit the manufacturer to make a profit through an excess of sales over expenses. In your practice work it is hardly to be supposed that you will know that the Blank company can get the loan of a few warships or that the Dash concern is in a position to make railroad stories more cheaply than others. In the purely practice work it does not particularly matter what you use for plot, since it is to be supposed that you will not offer these for sale immediately. At the same time, even in practice work it is best to plan your stories so that they involve a minimum of expense with a maximum of effect. This means the avoidance of one or two scenes employing a mob or the use of sight stuff. It means that interest must arise from your story and not from the extraneous material you put into it. This is all the more important in your early experience because, no matter how rapid or how great your progression may be, your real success will always be founded upon your ability to write plots and not on your skill at using outside matters to give a mechanical and purely perfunctory punch to the idea. You can get just about half way with trick writing and there you will stop. Once you stop retrogression will begin. Learn always to have a plot as a foundation for a story and then, you can add the train wrecks and burning oil wells at discretion and still be regarded as an author and not as a faker. For that reason a plot that is a plot and not a peg on which to hang a "sensation" should be your first requisite in making a choice. The fundamental of any good production is a clearly told and well defined plot. Plan to have your stories told by a small cast of principals. This does not mean that you should try to turn out four to six character plays. It does mean that not more than five or six persons should be used to unfold the plot, though you may use an army, if necessary, to back them up. You have already been given your two or three principal characters in the protagonist, the antagonist and the person who is the object of their struggle; in other words, your hero, heroine and villain. These are the essentials to a plot. You may have' the parents of the girl, the chum of the man, the assistant to the villain, the maid to the heroine, the valet of the hero, the postman, a telegraph boy and others, but these three should carry the story and do most of the telling of the plot. You should divide your people into three sets, the leading trio, their supporters and the extra people. There is a tendency on the part of beginners to use many personages in their play in the belief that a large cast will make a story look imposing. As a matter of fact the fewer the number of persons actually engaged in telling the story, the clearer will the plot become. Each of these important characters must be explained for themselves and in their relation to the other characters, and too much time is lost in acquainting the spectator with these various men and women. Few single reel plays should need more than six principals, and the story should give importance to the play; not the number of persons employed. To be avoided are plays with locales in two countries of contrasting color, such as Alaska and Mexico, or for that matter any two countries the exteriors for which may not be made in the same part of the country. Two countries can be used if in one country only interior scenes are used. The aim of the author should be to offer a plot that can be made in one place at one season of the year and not one that will entail travel or delay. Stories with many time jumps are not regarded with editorial favor. Scripts that bristle with "Three Weeks Later," "The Next Day," "After Many Years," and the like are not purchased as often as they are shown on the screen; many of these time leaders shown in finished plays being added as the result of overproduction of negative and consequent cutting. If the spectator is constantly required to adjust his mind to the new period, he will be too busy to follow the story. Another factor in the choice of n plot will be the censorship. This will be more fully taken up in a succeeding chapter, but entirely apart from any question of legal stoppage of a subject, plays that have for their sole reason crime, immorality, unmorality, the vicious or the irreverent are never praiseworthy and are to be avoided. Most persons are clean and decent at heart. If you will go over the list of plays from one to two years old, you will be surprised, if you are normally constituted, to find how few of those you remember are erotic or criminal. At the time these latter types may have appeared to be vivid and thrilling, but they made no deep impression. In the same way it will be found that the real dramatic successes are the clean ones. "Sapho" made large sums of money for its producers for a couple of seasons and "Mrs. Warren's Profession" crowded the jheatres for several months, but neither made as much money as did "The Old Homestead." Aim to get the sort of plot that is good both morally and structurally. 10. Aim, too, at the happy ending. You may think it banal and inartistic, but it is essential to the success of the manufacturer that the majority of the stories he turns out shall end in accordance with the desires of his audiences. Now and then you will find a story to wbich a happy ending is not possible. Do not distort facts to get a happy ending. Lay the idea aside until you can change the entire plot so that the happy ending is not only possible but the only possible ending that can be had. This does not mean that you change at the end and explain that Dale, the man Jim is sup- posed to have killed, is not dead at all but merely ran away. That is a forced happy ending that will fool no one and so please no one. It does not matter how well you may write. The public does not want and will not have a succession of stories in which the heroine is drowned in the last fifty feetor where the hero commits suicide in the last ten. You will doubtless see many stories with unhappy and doleful endings on the screen. Some of them will be unusually good, but a majority will show on study that a half-baked author sought to be strong merely by being perverse and running contrary to the desire of his spectators. Only the best and most highly trained writers can make the story with the unhappy ending acceptable. You will see others on the screen, but you will see much else on the screen that should be avoided. At the start, in particular, it is important to your success that you should be able to offer a studio precisely what it wants, and it wants the happy ending stories. It is well, at the start, to select themes with but few complica- tions. When you have grown experienced you will have learned to do so anyway, but at the start avoid the temptation to make your story interesting by inventing one or more sub-plots or complications to accompany the main theme. The more complication you offer the more explanation you must .give at the start and toward the climax. You are apt to find that you have used all your footage for explanation and have none left for your story. Keep your plot clear and simple and get strength by building up that plot with strength instead of adding lesser plots to make people curious. Avoid stories that will give offense to any race, creed, sect, po- litical party, society or propaganda. Do not touch strongly on religion or politics and keep as far as possible from purely local ideas and developments. The appeal of the film is world-wide. A baseball story may interest Americans, but it will interest the English no more than a story of cricket would appeal to us, and, in spite of world- tours of champion teams, be Greek to the Egyptians and Egyptian to the Greeks. For that matter even here in America an appeal may not be countrywide. A story based on the western dislike for paper money will not be very plain to New E,nglanders, and local prejudice may be still more hurtful. A story of the southwest showing all vil- lains as Mexicans may appeal to the men of the southwest and not be offensive to the northern parts of the United States, but most assuredly it will not aid the sale of film to South American countries to show the Latin races always in an unpleasant light with the sug- gestion that they are little more than animals. This may appeal to local prejudice and impress the uninformed as being picturesque, but the peso rings as attractively as the dollar in the manufacturer's till and he wants that South American business. Avoid the ridicule of personal deformities of mind or body. This is more particularly important in comedy. To you the hare lip may appeal as something excruciatingly funny, but many families are sensitive on this subject because some member of it is so afflicted. Avoid death and the overstrong suggestion of death. In comedy avoid death in any form. In comedy be good-natured. There are two types of comedy : those in which you laugh at persons and those in which you laugh with them. You may see a man slip and fall upon the icy walk. You laugh at his gyrations and because you are keeping your feet. It is an ill-natured and cruel laugh, just as you might laugh if a tramp stole the money from a beggar's hat and then broke his wooden leg as well to prevent pursuit. On the other hand, in the story of the book agent in Chapter XIII, you do not laugh when he is thrown out merely because he is thrown out, but because you share with him the belief in his eventual success. It will be all the sweeter a triumph because of the rebuffs. You laugh at the man who falls. You laugh with Tim, and like him you say: "Just wait!" After it is over you are not ashamed for having laughed. 17: To recapitulate, your choice of plot should be one that is Simple and direct. Not complicated by counter-plot. Told by few active characters. Centered directly upon one objective. Inexpensive in production. Not calculated to give offense. Not broken by an excess of time jumps. Capable of being made in one locality at one time. Provided with a happy ending. Later on you may disregard home of these points, but you will find that almost all if not fully all of the really successful plays conform to all of these requirements. Select happy, simple and yet dramatic themes for your dramas and clean and spontaneous ideas for comedy, and the rest is merely a matter of learning to develop them and then locating the best market for your particular product.